DrillLogs vs Excel
The workbook got you this far
Excel runs half the drilling industry and it earned that. This page gives you a clean PLOD template if a spreadsheet is what you need today, and an honest account of where workbooks start costing money as the fleet grows.
- Entry validation
- Offline at the rig
- One version
- Invoice backup
Free PLOD template
A ready-to-use daily drill log sheet: shift, crew, hole, activities with hours, depths and meters, bit changes, consumables, standby reasons, client sign-off. Standard activity codes on the second tab.
No email required.
Where the workbook breaks
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Version drift
The camp copy, the supervisor's copy and the office copy stop agreeing the first week. Which V7_FINAL_rev2 is true decides an invoice.
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Nothing argues back
A cell accepts a depth that goes backwards, hours that don't add up, and a shift with 7 missing hours. You find out at month-end, or when the client does.
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Re-keying tax
Every paper PLOD gets typed into the workbook, then retyped into the invoice, then summarized again for the client report. Three chances to fumble the same meter.
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One person owns the formulas
When the person who built the workbook is on days off or leaves, month-end stalls. The knowledge lives in cell logic nobody else dares touch.
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The client audit
When a client questions a meter, backup means digging through emails and comparing spreadsheet versions. That resolves slowly, and rarely in your favour.
| DrillLogs | Spreadsheet | |
|---|---|---|
| Entry validation | Depths, hours and gaps checked before the shift submits | Any value a cell accepts |
| Offline at the rig | Native tablet app, syncs itself | Paper first, typed later |
| One version | One record for rig, camp and office | Copies drift apart by design |
| Invoice backup | Every line traces to a shift record | Reconstructed from files and email |
| Month-end | Reports roll up from live data | Days of assembly, one owner |
| Cost | Per rig, per month, ask us for a number | Free, plus the hours it burns |
Moving off the workbook
Your programs and drill holes import from CSV, so the workbook you have today is the starting dataset, not wasted work. We import a current program on the setup call. Run one rig in parallel for a rotation and compare PLODs at the end of each shift.
Keep reading
Bring the workbook to the demo
We'll import a program from it live and show you the same shift going in both ways.
Book a demo